Younger workers entering the distribution industry often have a set of expectations that is very different from the expectations many of today's leaders had when entering the industry, according to distributors interviewed for Generational Shift Drives Changes in Technology, Customer Expectations.
“If we treated young folks new to the business today the same way that I was treated 35 years ago, then we wouldn’t be able to keep any of them,” Mike Rowlett, CEO of fluid power distributor Womack Machine Supply, said.
One of the starkest differences between the two groups according to Lillian White, president of Treen Safety (Worksafe) Inc., is their different perspectives on career advancement. “The expectations of students coming out of the university are pretty high in terms of what jobs they’ll get and what wage they’ll get,” she says.
Younger workers also have a unique definition of what makes an employer desirable, White says. “I think the generation today is often concerned about what the company’s purpose is and whether they are committed to social, environmental and community values, so we work really hard on that.”
Read what White and others have done to adjust to what motivates the next generation in Generational Shift Drives Changes in Technology, Customer Expectations.